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<h1><a href="https://archiveofourown.org/works/25412767">Everything in its Right Place</a> by <a class='authorlink' href='https://archiveofourown.org/users/Laurasauras/pseuds/Laurasauras'>Laurasauras</a></h1>

<table class="full">

<tr><td><b>Category:</b></td><td>Homestuck</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Genre:</b></td><td>Bondage, Collars, Currently Canon Compliant But Who Knows What The Future Holds, Dom/sub, Escape Attempts, F/F, F/M, Imprisonment, Multi, Post-Canon, Threesome - F/F/M, Violence, sun stroke</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Language:</b></td><td>English</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Status:</b></td><td>Completed</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Published:</b></td><td>2020-07-20</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Updated:</b></td><td>2020-07-22</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Packaged:</b></td><td>2021-05-05 04:08:45</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Rating:</b></td><td>Explicit</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Warnings:</b></td><td>Graphic Depictions Of Violence</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Chapters:</b></td><td>3</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Words:</b></td><td>10,660</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Publisher:</b></td><td>archiveofourown.org</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Story URL:</b></td><td>https://archiveofourown.org/works/25412767</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Author URL:</b></td><td>https://archiveofourown.org/users/Laurasauras/pseuds/Laurasauras</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Summary:</b></td><td><div class="userstuff">
              <p>After Dirk is defeated, Rose and Kanaya take responsibility for him. He doesn't trust anyone to keep him from going bad again, but they're capable of keeping him restrained and submissive. In every way.</p>
            </div></td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Relationships:</b></td><td>Rose Lalonde/Kanaya Maryam/Dirk Strider</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Comments:</b></td><td>4</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Kudos:</b></td><td>27</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Collections:</b></td><td>Polyswap Presents 2020</td></tr>

</table>

<a name="section0001"><h2>1. Chapter 1</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="fff_chapter_notes fff_head_notes"><b>Author's Note:</b><ul class="associations">
      <li>For <a href="https://archiveofourown.org/users/Psythe/gifts">Psythe</a>.</li>



    </ul><blockquote class="userstuff">
      <p>Happy birthday Dave!! You're my best friend and I love you, so I really hope you like this. It came out a bit dark at times (because, you know, the premise) but I've tried to steer it in a hopeful direction. I hope you have a wonderful day! &lt;3</p>
    </blockquote></div><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>He does it because he loves her and because he doesn’t trust her to be better than him. </p><p>Dirk punches Rose in the mouth and her head snaps to the right like a door slamming closed. She looks up from behind the line of her perfect hair, blood threatening to drip from the crack in her lips. He did that. If he was as smart as he thinks he is, as <em>hard</em> as he thinks he is, he would follow up with another punch, get her staggered enough that he can elbow her shoulder down into a brutal kick, then more, until she’s down and he can escape. He has these goddamned muscles for a reason but hell if he struggles to use them.</p><p>What if he trains himself out of the love he feels for her and next time he <em>can</em> do that? He makes himself see her as anyone but Rose and lifts his arm to punch her again.</p><p>Her glare isn’t enough to stop him, but her jab to his throat is. He chokes and recentres, <em>actually</em> ready to hurt her now. He feels the righteous fury of a man he remembers not being, and moves to backhand her. She ducks under his arm and stands tall, punches him hard enough to make his eyes water and then knees him in the balls. </p><p>He groans and staggers back, but she doesn’t stop. Her needles fall out of her sylladex and she stabs one deep into his shoulder as she drives the other into the air, crackling magic, and brings it down on his head. The needle inside him is jolted free as he falls to the ground. It is a thoroughly weird sensation when blood squirts from it, nothing like a sword wound. He feels the wet pressure as hot wetness spurts past his skin. </p><p>He tries to push himself up, but she kicks him in his shoulder wound and he falls back down, sucking air through his teeth.</p><p>‘I am your <em>god,’</em> he spits.</p><p>‘I’m an atheist,’ Rose says. ‘And you are nothing.’</p><p>Dirk has a much longer speech, one improved since he last screamed it through his room’s door, but Rose brings down her needle again and it cracks through metaphysical realms on its way to striking chaos onto Dirk’s head. It’s more than enough to knock him out and ensure a headache when he wakes up.</p><p>*</p><p>Rose is away somewhere and Kanaya is plucking stitches into nothing, not even looking at him. He’s supposed to be drawing, but he hasn’t touched pencil to paper for over a minute and the absence of sound surely should have attracted her attention. But no, she keeps working, head tilted slightly like it always is when she’s concentrating. </p><p>She brushes the broken strands of thread from her fabric and he can’t stand it anymore, he seizes her fabric scissors that are <em>right there</em> and aims for her hand. She backhands them away with so much force that it sprains Dirk’s wrist. </p><p><em>‘Really?’</em> she asks. Her tone is so disappointed it hurts worse than the wrist. He didn’t realise he had further to fall in her estimation.</p><p>*</p><p>They’re sleeping. They don’t do it in shifts, which is arrogant, but their arrogance isn’t enough of an assurance that they can afford to relax their guard around him. Part of Dirk lived in Rose’s mind for years, another part commanded her powers for just as long, so it’s an enormous oversight for her to have been the one to make his restraints. He doesn’t have light on his side anymore, but he can see the seams of her magic. He can slip through the cracks. That he achieves it now is a testament to the hundreds of hours he’s studied and prepared for it more than her carelessness, but he should never have had the chance.</p><p>He hasn’t been outside in months, if being chained to Dave and Roxy as they disembarked the ship can count as being outside. He was brought to this place unconscious, which means he’ll probably be lost as hell when he does get outside. He’ll manage, though. He’s very resourceful.</p><p>He’s silent when he confirms that Rose and Kanaya are asleep, and when he loads up his macrame bag with supplies. He’s done so many fucking <em>crafts</em> here, but this one is useful because his sylladex was taken away from him the second he lost. The most important of the supplies is his shades, confiscated solely for the humiliation; they’re next to useless now Roxy has gutted them of all technology but he isn’t about to leave bare-faced. His second priority is water, because he assumes he’s in the middle of nowhere. All the windows look into a surrounding greenhouse, which he hasn’t been able to see through despite inspecting every angle. </p><p>He checks the door one last time for any alarms he hasn’t dismantled and opens it. The plants are oppressive as he makes his way through them, and he has to fuck with another couple of alarms before he’s out of the next door, too. It’s amazing what a guy like him can do with a pair of scissors and a knitting needle.</p><p>And then he’s blinded.</p><p>Okay, no he’s not, but it’s <em>fucking</em> bright. What he thought was the middle of the night is actually the middle of the day and the contrast from the dark greenhouse is searing into his eyes. Stupid of him to not even consider whether the windows were artificial. He closes the door carefully and pulls both hands up to shield his face in addition to his shades. Apparently he made a good call in taking them back.</p><p>He slowly parts his fingers as his eyesight adjusts and grits his teeth against a groan. Once he steps off the stone path up to the house, it’s pale desert in every direction, sun reflecting off the sand like claws in his eyes. He does a perimeter to be sure. Yup. No “correct” way. And no words or windows flashing across his lenses to guide him.</p><p>He chooses north and wonders if that’s predictable as his shoes slip on the shifting sand. He went to the beach a couple of times back before he outgrew such frivolity, but that was like packed ground compared to this. On a badly placed step, sand pours down into his socks and burns his legs. He’s already sweating, already wants the water he brought, but he’s stronger than a desert. He won’t risk flying noticeably, he knows that satellites track that kind of thing (because he was the one who convinced Jane it was a good idea to program them that way), but he hovers a couple of inches above the sand and moves at walking pace so that he doesn’t have to deal with such <em>bullshit.</em></p><p>Walking pace is fucking slow.</p><p>He makes it through the brutal day despite the fact that he’s never been in such unforgiving heat, bitterly disappointed that his daughter was so lax with him as to let him escape. Even allowing for the not-insubstantial difficulty he had breaking through her magic, he should have been found by now. He thought she was better than this.</p><p>He doesn’t stop walking as the sky darkens. The stars provide him with as much direction as the position of the sun, but as he doesn’t know where he is, that’s useless. He keeps going north.</p><p>The night is a relief, especially when a gentle breeze rolls over the dunes and cools his sweat-soaked shirt. His eyes stop squinting as it darkens, and he’s glad he doesn’t need to remove his shades thanks to the stars, their brightness reminding him of a planet without light pollution. His bag feels lighter, <em>is</em> lighter, because even trying to hold out as much as possible, he did have to drink. He knows he’s probably more sunburn than dude right now, but when he makes it to civilisation that’ll be fixed up.</p><p>The temperature keeps falling. Every hint of wind is now an icy punishment and his raw skin is covered in goosebumps. He remembers the time he got a fever when he was fourteen, the only help some expired aspirin he couldn’t even move to get, freezing cold but with an unsettling magma roiling inside him. He lands on the sand and walks with his whole body, hoping the exertion will warm him up. He doesn’t stop moving all night.</p><p>Sunrise is as much a relief as sunset was, even though it’s a brutal reminder of time passing and therefore his exhaustion. His teeth stop chattering, but the goosebumps linger, even once he starts to feel himself burn again. </p><p>He staggers drunkenly until the sun is almost at its peak, and <em>then</em> remembers he can fly. He frowns with concentration as he wracks his brain. Does he jump into the air? No, that’s just jumping. Maybe he tenses somehow, or thinks happy thoughts like he’s Peter Pan. Maybe he <em>can’t</em> fly, maybe they took that off him too, somehow. Or maybe he never could, and the desert is fucking with his memories. </p><p>He keeps walking. The sand is hot against his side, but eventually cools in his shadow until it’s preferable to the sun, but he can’t turn over to give his other side some relief. He’s shivering again, even though it’s too hot for words. He vomits up some of his precious water, and can’t seem to move away from the puddle. This isn’t walking.</p><p>The sun is starting to set again when Rose sits next to him. He blinks at her and smiles. He loves Rose. Smiling hurts his lips, makes dry skin peel back from where he needs it and opens cuts he doesn’t remember getting, so he stops. </p><p>‘Have you learned your lesson?’ she asks.</p><p>He isn’t sure what his lesson was. Did he have a test? He’s good at tests, he can pass even without studying. He can’t remember how to nod his head.</p><p>‘Let’s not find out if this is <em>just,’</em> she sighs.</p><p>Rose takes his hands and he screams, the air shredding through his throat and whispering out of his mouth. She pulls him to standing and then drops his hand so that she can carry him like a baby. He wants to close his lips again but he can’t stop screaming, even though there’s no noise, even though he’s stronger than this. His body is on fire and she’s making it move and it shouldn’t be moving and his skin is blood and he’s dying ... And then he mercifully passes out.</p><p>Rose flies quickly, covering the space Dirk travelled in under an hour. She was following from a discrete distance most of the way, advantaged by her ability to fly back home, replenish herself, and find him again without effort. She let the desert dominate him more thoroughly than she could have brought herself to. She’s never pushed him to seizure. </p><p>Once home, she takes him into a shower trickling with cold water and holds him upright. He wakes up enough to rasp more mockeries of screams. Kanaya cuts his clothes from him and takes over holding him when the cold becomes too much for Rose to bear.</p><p>‘Sleep,’ she tells Rose.</p><p>‘He—’</p><p><em>’Sleep,’</em> Kanaya insists.</p><p>Rose is too tired to resist any more, which Kanaya is grateful for. Her attention is better served on Dirk.</p><p>He’s strong enough to survive this, so they’re not going to call Jane. Instead, when she’s confident the shock won’t make things worse, Kanaya lowers him into an ice bath. The ice starts melting immediately, but the relief is evident enough that when he closes his eyes, Kanaya deems it a sleep rather than a faint. She watches his temperature inch lower until it’s in the normal range, then pulls him out. </p><p>She barely needs to dry him, his skin soaks up or evaporates the liquid. He wakes up as she’s applying aloe as gently as she can.</p><p>‘Kanaya,’ he says, his voice still brutalised by dehydration and exposure.</p><p>‘That is me,’ she confirms.</p><p>‘You let me escape.’</p><p>‘Of course.’</p><p>He’s recovered enough to contribute to dressing himself in loose, silky pyjamas. The movement makes several of his blisters burst and his eyes go wide and frantic with pain. Kanaya winces sympathetically and applies disinfectant, which makes him shake and moan brokenly.</p><p>Rose comes into his room while he’s sleeping and Kanaya is standing vigil.</p><p>‘We haven’t killed him, have we?’</p><p>‘No.’ Kanaya hesitates in an effort to remove her judgement from her voice, then abandons it for a lost cause. ‘You could have brought him home sooner.’</p><p>‘I don’t think I could have. He needed to be pushed to absolute hopelessness and to feel the betrayal of a body that has never let him down before. He needs to know our limits, <em>his</em> limits.’</p><p>Kanaya returns to her embroidery, because she’s heard the speech before. She’s making Dirk a silk shirt in Rose’s colours, a darker orange than the one he favours and with yellow suns on the points of the collar. He won’t be able to wear anything coarser for a while. Her lip twitches upwards without her permission. He’s going to look like her horns in this shirt.</p><p>*</p><p>He experiments with trying to tear Rose’s soul along the perforated edges, a gentler destruction than the kind that left her with these scars. She’s cooking, her back turned and mind focused because she burns things so easily.</p><p>And then her wands are in her hands and she’s turning to him with all the might of a god, violet eyes full of hatred and heat and every part of her glowing like a sun that’s wrenched its veil off. She blasts him with electric light and his body stiffens and loses in one hit. </p><p>She makes herself and Kanaya a new dinner, but his is burnt. It tastes like copper, as everything else does for three more weeks.</p><p>*</p><p>Dave and Roxy visit one day. Roxy gives Dirk a big hug and Dave gives him a fistbump, and then they ignore him as they listen to Rose explain the plot of her newest book idea. They sit on the comfortable couches and Dirk’s collar prickles self-consciously against his neck. It covers up the scar from where Kanaya decapitated him, jagged and messy in a way his previous cephalophoric experiments had not been. It also jingles when he walks.</p><p>‘And what about you, Dirk-a-lurk,’ Roxy asks. ‘Rosie said you’d been knitting.’</p><p>‘Yeah,’ he says. His voice is steady despite the hesitance he feels, uncertain of the permission Rose has given him to speak. ‘Made the most misshapen hat to ever land on Earth C.’</p><p>‘You can get it for them if you like,’ Rose says. To Dave and Roxy, ‘His tension is too tight, unsurprisingly. Sometimes I thought he might actually tear through the wool trying to get to his next stitch.’</p><p>Dirk slinks from the living room and to the craft room. His hat is sitting in the basket of wool and needles he’s been given, though he should probably put it in his room now that it’s done. He considers an escape attempt, but he didn’t know Dave and Roxy were coming to plan for it and he’s tested every angle of the house he can think of. He goes back to the living room and hands Roxy his hat mildly. </p><p>‘D, baby, this is <em>not</em> as bad as I was expecting,’ they say. They put the hat on and turn to Dave. ‘How do I look?’</p><p>‘You know when hot people wear kinda shitty clothes and it looks like high fashion because they’re hot?’ Dave says. ‘Not that it’s shitty, they’re right, Dirk. It’s not that bad. Just ... crooked.’</p><p>It’s almost as if Dave and Roxy are trying to be nice to him, to be mindful of hurting his feelings. It’s not the first time they’ve visited, or the first time they’ve practically treated him like it’s normal. He thinks he’s adjusting though, because he’s not hearing insults in every word. A month ago, he’d have taken their gentleness as implication that he couldn’t handle their minor teasing.</p><p>‘His first scarf was crooked too,’ Rose says. ‘If he loosened his tension, they wouldn’t stand so stiff.’</p><p>‘That’s what she said,’ Dave says. ‘She being you or Kanaya, because I bet he wouldn’t be as into this if you were more chill about it.’</p><p>Dirk goes rigid. He lifts his eyes to Dave, then slowly across to Rose. His face feels warm and his heart is beating faster; it’s impossible to tell whether it’s from nerves or excitement. </p><p>‘Yes, they know,’ Kanaya says. ‘Rose can’t help but boast.’</p><p>‘I mean, you went there first,’ Dave says to Dirk. ‘Not <em>literally,</em> but come on, Rose always takes things to the next level. I didn’t need her to tell me.’</p><p>Dirk looks down again. <em>Rose boasted about him.</em></p>
  </div></div>
<a name="section0002"><h2>2. Chapter 2</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>It’s almost emasculating how much Dirk enjoys the sex. </p>
<p>The first time it happened, Rose was still a robot and Kanaya’s skirt was still splattered with Dirk’s blood. Dirk’s head was reattached and the rest of the gang had given Rose and Kanaya the room for reasons that Dirk would never find out. </p>
<p>Rose had gripped Dirk’s newly healed neck and said, ‘You are about to regret that you did not equip me with functioning genitalia,’ and then proved how creatively she could work around that. Kanaya was just as unyielding, just as confident, and she followed Rose’s commands exactly. It’s not always like that now.</p>
<p>Kanaya wears thigh high heels the way a tiger wears teeth and she is gravity to Rose’s supernova. Dirk leans into Rose behind him, choice taken out of the matter by his bound hands and the rope she holds, and wishes more had happened to earn him his erection. </p>
<p>‘That’s my wife,’ Rose murmurs possessively in Dirk’s ear. </p>
<p>Kanaya looks at them, stood with her legs slightly parted, in no hurry to move and with no concern over her state of undress. The sheets are soft against Dirk’s legs and he is entirely exposed, not afforded the costuming that Kanaya sometimes provides. </p>
<p>‘She is <em>radiant,’</em> Rose says, almost to herself. Then, to Dirk: ‘You know things will last longer with her in charge.’</p>
<p>Dirk doesn’t take his eyes off the hint of green behind the black lace of Kanaya’s underwear as he licks his lips and nods, making the bell on his collar tinkle faintly. She’s not unsheathed yet, but that doesn’t mean he won’t be giving her his mouth. That’s why he’s staring, obviously. So he’s prepared.</p>
<p>‘I am endlessly impatient. I get caught up in using you. Kanaya <em>savours</em> you.’</p>
<p>Dirk turns his head to look at Rose and tries to communicate with his eyes. He is totally and utterly under their control, and this is part of how they remind him, but he desperately wants to ask if he’s worth using. Rose smiles and shakes her head, denying him speech. When he’s less aroused he’ll be glad he didn’t voice his uncertainty, though he’ll still want to know. Rose kisses him on the cheek and he frowns, overcompensating in his need to cover up that <em>that</em> is what gets to him, these moments of softness where he is <em>terrified</em> that he’s forgiven. She thumbs between his brows and his face obediently smooths. </p>
<p>‘Good,’ she says quietly. Dirk shudders, the tiny affirmation much worse for his composure than what was a mostly innocent display of affection. Rose zeroes in on it like a hawk that’s sighted a rabbit, but Kanaya steps forward and guides Dirk’s face forward again. His eyes are level with the black fabric dripping down her ribcage and flirting with the line between bra and corset.</p>
<p>He looks up to her face and inhales shakily as Rose takes this as an invitation to suck on his earlobe. Kanaya looks thoughtful, her claws still firm on his jawline. Dirk wants to know what she’s thinking, but Kanaya doesn’t monologue about her evil plans. She’s restrained in everything but her love for Rose, and even that Dirk barely glimpses. That, and in her mastery over chainsaws, apparently. He hasn’t seen anything like that since their first time.</p>
<p>He doesn’t have a fucking clue what she gets out of this. When she kisses him, he feels like a science experiment. Her commands sound like invitations. She sounds vaguely surprised when she makes a joke. She can beat the shit out of him, and <em>has,</em> at Rose’s prompting, but she does that with as much emotion as when she prunes her garden. Since he was moved here he hasn’t been sure if she still hates him, or feels anything for him at all. She treats him like he’s Rose’s pet who she’s willing to walk. </p>
<p>Kanaya releases her hold on Dirk’s face and takes the length of rope holding his wrists together from Rose. Dirk doesn’t like having his hands restrained when she’s so close, or (obviously) at all. He doesn’t like feeling so over-conscious of his powerlessness. She tugs the rope so that he’s off to the side of the bed, then climbs up. She plants her palm over the rope to keep him next to her, then tilts Rose onto her back.</p>
<p>The rope isn’t what keeps Dirk contained; the house is impossible to escape. (His one success was allowed and he hasn’t come close since.) It’s not the thing that keeps him on their bed and watching them make out. He could break out of the rope, he could tug it out of the space between Kanaya’s hand and the bed, he could close his eyes and count to a million. The rope remains on him and doesn’t so much as twitch. It’s not a restraint, it’s a symbol of his willingness to be held, and he hates it.</p>
<p>Rose’s short dress falls to t-shirt level as her legs wrap around Kanaya’s hips and expose her bare ass. Her hands grip Kanaya’s hair and ruin the perfect black disarray with pale fingers. Their bodies grind against each other and the angle is just right for Dirk to watch as Kanaya’s sheath swells, drips, then releases her bulge. There’s not enough room in her panties for it and the fabric parts from her legs enough for Dirk to see the shine of her nook. The lace presses flowers to her bulge, and there’s something about a tentacle confined by pretty underwear that has Dirk suddenly conscious of how loudly he’s breathing.</p>
<p>Kanaya abandons Dirk’s rope so she can pull Rose’s dress off and Rose pulls Kanaya’s panties down past the top of her boots. Kanaya pushes herself up enough to take them all the way off, but doesn’t get back on top of Rose immediately. Dirk looks at her. He can’t pretend indifference. </p>
<p>‘Dirk,’ Kanaya says politely.</p>
<p>Dirk inclines his head because he hasn’t been given permission to speak. When he moves slowly, he can barely hear his bell.</p>
<p>‘Please lie on the floor. Face up.’</p>
<p>It’s not especially easy with his hands behind his back from a very plush bed, but Dirk keeps steady as he stands, then lies down. It’s not <em>comfortable</em> with his arms behind his back, but it won’t be <em>uncomfortable</em> until his weight restricts the circulation in them. </p>
<p>Rose sits up so she can watch and Dirk forces himself to keep his eyes on Kanaya instead of her. It’s the right choice, because it means he isn’t surprised when Kanaya’s heel alights on his chest. His dick is interested in this development, because his dick is dumb as shit and isn’t getting the message that this isn’t a playful non-threat. His mistresses don’t fuck around with pretend fear and safewords, they’re not the kind of doms bored businessmen take themselves to when they want to put down the pressure of leadership. They promise him relentlessly that they can handle him and that they own him, more thoroughly than he ever owned anyone. And he can put down the pressure of leadership.</p>
<p>‘You haven’t tried to escape in a while,’ Kanaya says. ‘Why?’</p>
<p>Dirk automatically looks to Rose for permission and Kanaya’s thin heel digs into his skin. <em>Jesus.</em> What’s a woman as tall as her doing with heels anyway? She’s taller than Jake, for Christ’s sake. </p>
<p>‘I can’t escape,’ he says.</p>
<p>The toe of her boot maintains a firm but manageable pressure, but when she moves her foot in dorsiflexion the heel digs in again and he winces. He knows every bone in his body and so knows that she’s pressing against the xiphoid process of the sternum, a tiny little triangle of bone that has a tendency to snap from the rest of the sternum and pierce lungs if someone misplaces their hands in CPR. He used to think that Rose and Kanaya were unwilling to inflict harm on the level of <em>lung-piercing.</em> He decides truth is in his best interests.</p>
<p>‘I’m waiting for inspiration and/or opportunity,’ he corrects.</p>
<p>‘It’s been a <em>while,’</em> Kanaya says.</p>
<p>‘I’m patient.’</p>
<p>The heel again. He doesn’t dare to breathe, to let his chest rise. The pressure lessens and he can talk.</p>
<p>‘You don’t leave me many openings,’ he says, past the tension of his jaw and the low-level anger he still sometimes feels when he’s humiliated.</p>
<p>‘How do you feel about me?’ Kanaya asks.</p>
<p>‘What?’</p>
<p>Heel. He widens his eyes in alarm, showing his cooperation, and she stops. </p>
<p>‘Sorry, mistress,’ he says. He used to be unable to say that without sounding sarcastic. ‘Are you asking me if I have Stockholm syndrome?’</p>
<p>‘You already had emotional bonds with us,’ Rose says. ‘But if that’s what you’re feeling, you may report as such.’</p>
<p>‘Any feelings,’ Kanaya clarifies. </p>
<p>Dirk tries to gather his thoughts. Foremost in his mind is the fact that his boner is persisting and the up-skirt-without-the-skirt view is probably contributing, much as he’s trying to keep his eyes from where her bulge is slowly rolling. Mostly, she confuses him. The only thing he hates more than uncertainty is admitting uncertainty, but a seer of light is sitting on the bed.</p>
<p>‘You’re hot,’ he says, like it costs him nothing. ‘You’re good on the sewing machine and I appreciate that you let me on it as well. I don’t know what the fuck your deal is because you don’t treat me like you hate me, but, you know. I’m evil.’</p>
<p>Kanaya accepts this. She doesn’t tell him what her deal is, which he thinks is a piss-poor reward for his honesty. </p>
<p>‘How do you feel about Rose?’ she asks.</p>
<p>Ah. His pride is in tatters, but there’s a thin membrane covering that particular part. He tilts his chin up defiantly. </p>
<p>‘I love her,’ he says.</p>
<p>‘Hmm,’ Kanaya says thoughtfully. She lifts the boot from his chest and he experiences a microsecond of relief before she places it, more gently but still <em>holy shit,</em> on his dick.</p>
<p>‘How much of that is fear?’ Rose asks.</p>
<p>‘The figure is increasing,’ Dirk hisses.</p>
<p>‘As is the figure itself,’ Kanaya says. </p>
<p>Yeah. He hates his body. <em>She might actually skewer your dick,</em> he tells himself sternly. His erection finds this exciting. In some ways he is that bored businessman, turned on by the fact that he can’t stop them from doing whatever the fuck they want to him.</p>
<p>‘Rose is mine,’ he growls, lifting his head and shoulders from the ground in aggression. ‘You might think she’s yours, and she might look like she’s yours right now, but she’s <em>mine.</em> Our souls are the same, our hearts were one, and you will wait out the rest of your miserable existence wondering if you’re not the third wheel in this arrangement. The next time I get in your head I will shatter you until you make <em>Jake</em> look like the picture of mental health and she’ll be so repulsed she’ll <em>beg</em> me to take her away again. And I will, you frigid bitch. You should have left me dead, because you’ll never <em>fix</em> me.’</p>
<p>He pants up at Kanaya. He still can’t get a read on her expression.</p>
<p>‘That’s a relief,’ Kanaya says, lifting her foot gracefully up and then onto the floor beside his hip. ‘Imagine if he became capable of hiding his emotions.’</p>
<p>Rose climbs off the bed and kisses Kanaya on the cheek before standing in front of her, bare feet on either side of Dirk’s torso and looking down at him. Where Kanaya has the tall, thin grace of a supermodel (with defined musculature that she doesn’t even work out to maintain), Rose is short, with Roxy’s curves and a posture that actively challenges anyone to think of her as small despite the physical evidence.</p>
<p>‘You’re astonishingly stupid sometimes,’ she says. ‘I am not owned by anyone.’ She lowers herself, knees bracketing Dirk’s shoulders and ass just above his chest. She runs a finger along the inside of his collar and the bell falls to one side quietly. ‘You think we’ll drop our guard, let you free, and stay blind as you take dominion over us again. You’re wrong. Do you think it will happen when I foolishly let myself love you again?’</p>
<p>He nods, eyes fixed on Rose’s. She smiles condescendingly.</p>
<p>‘Dirk, you <em>idiot.</em> I love you now. I have not stopped loving you for a second. Have you found my conduct soft?’</p>
<p>He shakes his head musically. He’s starting to relax, the developing pins and needles in his arms becoming less important as his brain prioritises Rose over any kind of selfish sensation. </p>
<p>‘Did loving me inhibit you?’</p>
<p>He shakes his head again. He took her because he knew his way was best. His love for her made him stronger, more ruthless, because it wasn’t just his life on the line. She nods and strokes down his face. It’s a relief when she moves forward so that her sex is in reach of his mouth and he doesn’t have to respond.</p>
<p>She’s already wet when his tilts his chin up to lick her, his tongue slides over her folds and parts them, feels the bump of her clit and lingers. He’s seen Kanaya, careful of her fangs, tease Rose’s thighs with feather-light kisses before she buries her face here. He’s watched how she makes Rose writhe and moan, carelessly loud once she’s lost herself to sensation. He could probably replicate it if he tried, and he knows he was shown for the exact purpose of learning how to do it right. But he doesn’t have a trainwreck of teeth and he prefers his own path. He closes his lips around her tiny hardness and <em>sucks.</em></p>
<p>He revolves the pressure of suction like he’s trying to start an engine after the battery has died. He wants to pull her down more firmly onto his face, to press himself to her and inside her like Kanaya can’t, but his hands are useless behind his back. She shudders closer without him needing to prompt her, drawn in by his mouth. He flicks his tongue over her again and again and hears her moan, somewhat muffled by her thighs next to his ears.</p>
<p>He can feel Kanaya lean down to straddle him too, behind Rose and undoubtedly touching her, pinching her nipples and kissing her neck. He doesn’t need to see to know, because it’s what he’d do if he were allowed. Rose deserves everything. Cool slurry drips slowly and unevenly onto his chest.</p>
<p>She’s so warm against him, grinding against his face in desperate little movements, trying to angle him back, towards her entrance, but he moves with her and keeps sucking on her clit and she can’t help but chase that feeling as well. She’s losing herself on his mouth and it makes his thighs tense with want. When Kanaya lifts her back and off him, he jerks his shoulders impotently in frustration.</p>
<p>Kanaya lifts him next, first by the upper back so he’s sitting up and then around the waist. He tolerates being hauled around by them, is used to it, and is more discomforted by the blood rushing back to his forearms. He flexes his fingers to speed the process. Kanaya gently wipes his mouth with a handkerchief and fixes his hair. He can’t seem to stop himself from liking how she fusses over him, which almost makes it swing back into hatred, but it never quite makes it there.</p>
<p>‘I am about to depart this life for one with sexual fulfillment,’ Rose says impatiently.</p>
<p>‘You are not,’ Kanaya says. She smiles conspiratorially at Dirk. Dirk does <em>not</em> know what to do with that. ‘You are about to read erotic fiction to us until we cannot restrain ourselves any longer.’</p>
<p>‘That <em>I’ve</em> written, or—’</p>
<p>‘I was joking. Dirk is going to fuck you.’ Dirk turns immediately, but Kanaya holds his rope too firmly for him to progress further. ‘I’m going to fuck Dirk,’ she adds. </p>
<p>She hands the rope to Rose and sheds the last of her clothes before climbing onto the bed and crossing her legs. Dirk moves as directed into her lap. She checks that the rope isn’t digging in unnecessarily. It <em>is</em> a bit tight, but that’s because he has a habit of trying to struggle free and he’s less likely to when they’ve tied him well. The rope is a soft braided material that doesn’t tend to burn him unless he really lets his wrists have it. He’s not always tied up, but he often is. Sometimes even when there isn’t sex involved, just to remind him that his every movement is made under their grace. Her arms encircle him from behind, increasing his confinement.</p>
<p>Kanaya’s bulge is wet, and cold enough to provoke some <em>interesting</em> reactions, but not outside of comfort. It’s easier to take when she bites her soporific venom into his bloodstream, but the self-lubrication and tapered tip comes with advantages. She takes it slow every time, even when they’ve been rough in every other way. She doesn’t like it too tight.</p>
<p><em>’Fuck,’</em> he breathes as the tip enters him. Thicker than Rose’s finger but not as thick as his. Increasing slowly and undulating against his rim. The wet sound in concert to the alien pleasure-noises he can feel through her chest. Filling him up and up and making it really fucking hard to concentrate on what Rose is doing.</p>
<p>She crawls forward and strokes her warm hand down from his cheek to his neck, over Kanaya’s arms and to his hip. Kanaya leans back helpfully. Her hand leaves him, her attention leaves him, and she starts kissing Kanaya over his shoulder. He feels irrationally left out until Kanaya’s claws dig into his arms with a particularly violent chirr. The slow pace is abandoned as she drives the rest of the way into him. Rose knows exactly how to activate the frenzied state that Kanaya can only sometimes stifle, information she hasn’t shared with Dirk. He digs his fingers into his arms and bites back a moan of pleasure at the intensity of Kanaya’s bulge’s movements.</p>
<p>Rose draws back and looks Dirk in the eye as her hands do something with Kanaya’s horns. Kanaya’s bulge flicks in a tight circle and his head tilts backwards as it does all kinds of things to his insides. It’s a sensation he can’t get used to, the way she practically stirs him like batter, thrashing as best she can given the space. It’s different as fuck to a dick, he’d slap anyone’s hand away if they tried to wiggle a finger around like this, but the shifting pressure sends him just about out of his mind. </p>
<p>‘Rose,’ Kanaya pants.</p>
<p>Rose straddles Dirk’s lap without taking her hands away. He lifts his hips up in an attempt to complete the promised chain, but she’s more focused on Kanaya still and Dirk doesn’t have a hand free to persuade his dick to angle in a more productive direction. He bucks up uselessly and then groans in harmony with Kanaya as that shifts things against his rim, the base of her bulge. Kanaya releases him around the middle and leans back on her hands, crotch pressed up super cosy to his ass and if he copies just a bit he becomes a helluva lot more rideable, if only Rose pays some fucking attention to that. Kanaya stretches her legs out and he adjusts so he’s kneeling on either side, and he’d be able to continue that thrusting, but Kanaya’s got hold of his hip and is keeping him urgently pressed to her. He can’t say he’s suffering. </p>
<p><em>Finally,</em> Rose guides him inside of her. He’s caught between lover and beloved, cold and warm, alien and familiar. He tries to rock back and forth but he’s trapped, not allowed, forced to just take both sensations. Kanaya doesn’t need movement under him to do her thing and that just provides more contrast as Rose slides along his length in a punishingly regular rhythm. He wants to touch her, to wind her up like she did to Kanaya and reap the rewards. Every time he tries his bonds and remembers that he could probably break them if he used his full strength, he’s forced back into the knowledge that he <em>wants</em> exactly this. He groans, pulls weakly against the rope, and slips a little deeper into compliance.</p>
<p>Rose wraps her hands around his neck, fingers slipping under his collar and to the soft skin of his scar. She’s fascinated with it, had thought it’d be hard and lack sensation. Her thumbs slide under too, and breathing becomes more difficult. She’s still so frustratingly regular in her movements, lavender eyes watching him curiously as she engages in irresponsible breathplay practices. He stares back hungrily.</p>
<p>‘Relax,’ she says softly, freeing his throat from her constriction.</p>
<p>He doesn’t obey willingly, but she speeds up, up, fast and yet still in control, using his dick to further her own pleasure and incidentally accelerating his. He melts back against Kanaya’s chest, feels her small breasts against his back as he watches Rose’s fuller ones. They bounce, then compress under her hands as she kneads them, a nipple erect between two fingers and black nails digging into her skin as she pulls one breast higher then drops it. He wants his teeth on her but he can’t move, and it’s at that one last moment of willing helplessness that he feels his body finally <em>let go.</em></p>
<p>He closes his eyes and relaxes completely against Kanaya as his dick pulses inside Rose, giving her his release as he always does. His brain has fucked off to some other planet where it can’t hurt anyone, where he doesn’t have to keep himself exhaustingly in check. He just <em>feels</em> as his body shudders with overstimulation, and then as he’s lowered gently onto his side and released. </p>
<p>The bed is the most comfortable place in the world, Rose and Kanaya are beautiful as they clutch each other, the smell of sex mingles with the room’s forever fragrant atmosphere of candles and perfume.</p>
<p>Rose’s hands return to Kanaya’s horns and Kanaya nuzzles her face in between Rose’s breasts as they move in a frantic and choreographed intimacy. Kanaya’s bulge drives deeper than Dirk’s dick did, rolls and stretches and pushes her along in her want. They touch with confidence, Kanaya’s knuckle massaging Rose’s clit and Rose’s nails digging into Kanaya’s hornbeds. Their desperation keeps them sitting upright where their pleasure wants them to collapse, hanging onto one another and racing, pulling each other to orgasm.</p>
<p>Rose cries out as she comes, tightening around Kanaya’s bulge and stiffening in her increasingly clumsy movements. Kanaya drives deep into the constriction and releases the last of her slurry in a sigh. Her empty bulge slowly withdraws and Rose relaxes into her arms.</p>
<p>‘I love you so much,’ Rose says breathlessly.</p>
<p>‘You have a habit of telling me this after I have screwed you,’ Kanaya says, smiling wryly. (Her word choice amuses her; the pattern of a corkscrew feels appropriate for the way her bulge moves.)</p>
<p>‘I also tell you when you’ve done the dishes,’ Rose says.</p>
<p>‘Mmm, and when I give you presents.’</p>
<p>‘And when you take spiders outside.’</p>
<p>‘I suppose you tell me other times.’</p>
<p>Kanaya pulls them down to the bed and Rose cuddles in closer. They move automatically into their favourite position, Rose’s head tucked under Kanaya’s chin and body pressed against her side, legs intertwined. </p>
<p>‘When you come in from the greenhouse with sweat glistening on your arms and fresh lipstick on,’ Rose murmurs dreamily.</p>
<p>‘I love you too, inkling,’ Kanaya says, kissing Rose on the head and assuming incorrectly that that will be the end of it.</p>
<p>‘When you have pins in your mouth and that little frown of concentration.’</p>
<p>Kanaya rolls Rose onto her back.</p>
<p>‘That’s quite enough,’ she says.</p>
<p>‘When you make me laugh.’</p>
<p>Kanaya kisses Rose on the cheek and then extricates herself from her silly matesprit. Dirk is still lying peacefully on the bed, eyes open and watching them but almost dim in his surrender.</p>
<p>‘We should look after this one,’ Kanaya says.</p>
<p>‘When you look after my insane father,’ Rose says.</p>
<p>Kanaya looks to the ceiling as if asking the long extinct imperial fleet for assistance. She unties Dirk’s rope and guides his arms straight as she lies him on his back. She points Rose sternly to his no doubt sore muscles, and leaves to fetch water. </p>
<p>When Dirk gets into this state, his face relaxes to such a degree that he looks half his age. His browline softens from its constant animation, his eyes widen, the smirk falls away from his lips. Even cowed as he is under their care, they only rid him of that mockery of a smile in times like this. Kanaya wonders if he would think of himself as irretrievably evil if he could see what he looks like now. Well, he probably would. But Kanaya struggles to connect the man with the high collar and bulging biceps who she crossed blades with to this one. Rose thinks that it’s Kanaya’s unfailing maternal instincts. Kanaya (privately) thinks it’s because she fell in love with a sorceress while she ripped her world apart. They don’t just share the same sharp cheekbones.</p>
<p>She returns just as Dirk is slowly regaining his ability to think.</p>
<p>‘Rose,’ Dirk mumbles.</p>
<p>Rose takes his hand and presses a chivalrous kiss to it. The disparity in their sizes makes this faintly ridiculous.</p>
<p>‘You love me,’ he says.</p>
<p>‘Of course I do, you ass,’ she says. Kanaya knows that despite her casual tone, Rose has been carefully planning when Dirk would be ready to hear this for a long while.</p>
<p>He nods and reaches for her with both arms. She moves easily between them. </p>
<p>‘You’re avoiding cleaning the sheets,’ Kanaya accuses.</p>
<p>‘I love you,’ Rose says, smiling cheekily.</p>
<p>‘I am going to make you into an armchair.’</p>
<p>‘I don’t have nearly enough skin for that.’</p>
<p>Foiled, Kanaya goes about changing the sheets, shooing the two of them to wash the green off when they get in the way. On a much cleaner bed, she holds both her little damp-haired humans on either side of her, their hands linked on her chest. She likes their energy and wit, but she likes when they put down their performances for a little while too. They’re soft and warm, and she wonders exactly how they manage to fit so much mischief into these little bodies. Well, one is not quite little, but in all honesty and despite everything, he’s probably the lesser threat.</p>
<p>Kanaya’s purrs quiet into steady breathing as she falls asleep like dialogue between matching quotation marks. Things are slowly getting better.</p>
  </div></div>
<a name="section0003"><h2>3. Chapter 3</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>‘What would you do if I made a run for it?’ Dirk asks. He’s lying on his back, head in Rose’s lap, grass raising a mild allergic reaction on his bare skin because he hasn’t followed Kanaya’s advice and put a towel down.</p>
<p>‘I would see the intention on your face and smother you with my book,’ Rose says, not looking away from the book in question.</p>
<p>‘No, really,’ he says.</p>
<p>Rose sighs heavily and looks down at him. He’s been allowed his shades for the first time in a while because of the sun, and they reduce his eyes to monochrome. They don’t conceal the carefully steady expression that belies his anxiety. He trusts her more and more to be able to handle him, but he’s still unused to being allowed to leave the house and is sure he’s going to collapse into maniacal laughter and miscellaneous villainy at any moment. The fact that he hasn’t done anything without explicit permission in the last year helps, but hasn’t cured.</p>
<p>‘I would strike you down with lightning. Or, if you were sneaky about it and pretended to be going to get in the pool or for ice cream, I would set Jade on you and have her physically drag you back to me regardless of the condition of the ground and your bare back. And we’d stay at home for a very long while. No puppets when you’re grounded.’</p>
<p>‘Harsh, but fair.’</p>
<p>Rose picks her book back up. She makes it most of the way down the page when Terezi sits down next to them. She sighs considerably louder.</p>
<p>‘Can Dirk come out to play?’ Terezi asks, her voice grating and sing-song.</p>
<p>‘What did Kanaya say?’ Rose asks.</p>
<p>‘I didn’t ask Kanaya.’</p>
<p>‘Yes you did, what did she say?’</p>
<p>Terezi groans and pulls up two handfuls of grass. She throws them ineffectually at Rose. Dirk brushes a single blade from his cheek.</p>
<p>‘She said Dirk had to wait 45 minutes after eating and it had only been 40.’</p>
<p>Dirk snorts. He doubts the timing on cramp-prevention is so precise, but he knows that Kanaya is very willing to enforce it. He doesn’t move from Rose’s thigh. Rose dog-ears her book and sets it aside, accepting that she’ll be enduring Terezi’s company for the next five minutes. She occupies her hands in Dirk’s hair instead.</p>
<p>‘I’m astonished you aren’t sick of me,’ Dirk says.</p>
<p>‘John is a shitty Naruto,’ Terezi says, ignoring him.</p>
<p>‘Make him be Goku.’</p>
<p>Terezi brightens, sitting up much straighter. She looks over at John and sniffs enthusiastically, before scooching up next to Rose.</p>
<p><em>‘Roooose,</em> be Android 18.’</p>
<p>‘Make Dave do it,’ she says.</p>
<p>‘No, Dave is Krillin,’ Terezi says, grinning wickedly. ‘Dirk is Vegeta and I am Piccolo.’</p>
<p>‘Make Roxy do it,’ Rose says.</p>
<p>‘I will make you Master Roshi if you are not Android 18,’ Terezi warns.</p>
<p>Rose closes her eyes and wishes the day were cooler so that she had the energy to fight harder against this. She tugs on Dirk’s hair in her frustration, but he doesn’t mind.</p>
<p>‘What is the game?’ she asks, opening her eyes again.</p>
<p>‘Shoulder wars,’ Terezi says.</p>
<p><em>’Why is it anime?’</em> Rose asks. She is not answered.</p>
<p>Vriska is unsurprisingly the victor of anime-themed shoulder wars. She wins even when she’s dragged off Jake’s shoulders and put on Karkat’s, with Dirk on Jake’s shoulders instead. She has an unfortunate habit of crowing when she successfully dunks another chump beneath the water. Terezi’s reach isn’t long enough for her to play her usual role of Vriska-defeater. </p>
<p>Kanaya isn’t competitive enough to want to try against Vriska, though she does play a few rounds so that she can end Jade’s streak, Dave blushing in between her legs as her mount. Eventually, everyone but Dirk runs out of the kind of taunts anime characters say in fights. The disparaging “tch” response is banned for unoriginality. Vriska is given a crown made out of daisies. People start to talk about going home.</p>
<p>Dirk, Kanaya and Rose all go back to Dave and Karkat’s. Rose walks ahead, debating with Dave over whether vultures could have unions. They both appear to be deadly serious. Dirk walks between Kanaya and Karkat, fighting against something like agoraphobia. He isn’t used to being out for more than a few hours. They’re always pushing against his comfort zones just a bit.</p>
<p>‘What would you do if I attacked you?’ he asks Kanaya.</p>
<p>‘It would depend on the severity,’ Kanaya says thoughtfully. She looks around at their environment, evaluating makeshift weapons. The most significant are Dirk’s vanity muscles. He was just as strong before he leveled up his buffness attribute, but he does cut a more intimidating figure now. </p>
<p>‘I assume you would go for me first and use me as a shield so that Karkat couldn’t attack you while you choke me out,’ she says. ‘In which case, I would do the self defense things until I was free enough to bite you.’</p>
<p>‘What self defense things,’ Dirk asks, staring at their feet as they walk.</p>
<p>‘Perhaps I would kick your instep and then elbow you in your dangling semen apparatus.’</p>
<p>Dirk chokes on a laugh. Kanaya takes his hand and threads their fingers together. Harder to escape like this.</p>
<p>‘Thank you for that delightful insight into your home life,’ Karkat says. ‘I needed that. I’m going to collect all these positive feelings with a butterfly net and then put them under my snuggle cushion so that they’ll make my dreams extra sunny.’</p>
<p>‘We have advanced to the point where the scheming can remain theoretical,’ Kanaya says. ‘Be supportive.’</p>
<p>‘I am so fucking supportive. Do you even see me? I’m a wobble holster over here! Your emotional rumblespheres are staying so firmly in place you’re finding it a little difficult to breathe.’ Karkat kicks a rock off the path. ‘No jiggling in this area, I’m on the fucking case.’</p>
<p>‘Dude, It’s okay, I know what the problem is,’ Dirk says. </p>
<p>He reaches out his other hand and grabs Karkat’s. Karkat snatches his hand away like he thinks Dirk’s going to ingest it and glares at him. Dirk makes a kissy noise and Karkat hisses and skitters forward to catch up with Dave and Rose. Dirk looks to Kanaya to make sure he hasn’t overstepped and she smiles at him.</p>
<p>‘If you had attacked Karkat first I would have teamed up with Rose to take you down without injuring him.’</p>
<p>Dirk nods. His hand doesn’t relax against hers.</p>
<p>‘What if I’m emotionally manipulating you?’</p>
<p>‘Are you?’</p>
<p>Dirk is quiet as he considers this. </p>
<p>It’s a nice day. The sun is lingering in the sky as it tends to do in summer. As they walk deeper into Dave and Karkat’s neighbourhood, the smell barbeques and fire pits is on the air. Karkat’s voice carries from up ahead where Dave and Rose have put aside their vulture conversation in favour of teasingly asking him if he’s leaving Dave for Dirk now. </p>
<p>‘I don’t think I am,’ Dirk says. ‘I hate that. I never used to qualify my sentences, I either was doing something or I wasn’t. I was a direct guy. I could handle so much shit, maintain all those irons in the fire without breaking a sweat, turn those sons of bitches when they need it, all ready to forge some goddamn swords. And you know they’d be perfect. I was a fucking prince, Kanaya, I don’t know what the fuck I am now.’</p>
<p>Rose has a tendency to ridicule the suggestion that Dirk was once infallible in order to break through his faulty self-perception. It seems to help to distance him from his disgusted self-aggrandisation. Now out of his spell, Rose is disbelieving that she ever fell into it. Which is fine and works, especially because she’s proven over and over that her disparagement of Dirk’s “former glory” does not remotely mean she is going easy on him. But Kanaya doesn’t think Dirk only managed what he did because their family wasn’t expecting it.</p>
<p>‘Actually, scratch all of that,’ he continues. ‘I <em>am</em> emotionally manipulating you. It doesn’t matter that I don’t mean to or that you’re on your guard, I’m currently doing a very impressive impression of a man who is being slowly and painfully rehabilitated. I’m clearly working for it, you guys are too, and we’re seeing results.’</p>
<p>‘And those results are fake?’</p>
<p>‘Of course they are. Or they will be, retroactively, once you no longer see me as a threat and let me be and I just do it all over again. When that happens, this so-called recovery will have just been a necessary step in the plan.’</p>
<p>Kanaya hums agreeably. Dirk wants to wrench his hand free so that he can shake her by the shoulders and force her to see what’s in front of her. </p>
<p>He imagines shaking her until she’s dead, neck snapped, then going and killing everyone else as well. Snapping Dave’s neck and taking his sword, it’d be easy from there. Stabbing Karkat in the gut, letting him fall onto Dave, together forever, congratu-fucking-lations. Holding Rose around her waist as he drags the blade through her throat. Hell, maybe he’d steal her needles and take them for a spin. He could track every one of his friends down, more than that, all the people they associate with, the carapacians they nod to as they pass them on walks, the humans who live next door, the trolls who they share elevators with, the consorts they buy fruit from.</p>
<p>He sees them all dead behind his eyes and Kanaya isn’t <em>doing</em> anything. She’s just peacefully walking hand in hand with him as he commits murder in his mind.</p>
<p>He stops her.</p>
<p>‘Kanaya, you have to kill me,’ he says. His tone is grave, his arms pepper with goosebumps, he’s scared because he means it and she doesn’t underestimate him, so she’ll do as he says.</p>
<p>Kanaya looks at him with her kind eyes. </p>
<p>‘I don’t have to do anything I don’t want to do,’ she says calmly. ‘You, however, are at my mercy and my pleasure.’ </p>
<p>She turns her head to check on the others and sees that they’ve stopped. As she looks away from him, Dirk grabs a horn and pulls her head towards him as he strikes out with his fist. </p>
<p>In less than a second he’s punched to the ground, electrocuted and has a sword to his throat. He squints up through an already bruising eye to see his siblings side by side and Karkat, turning around and shaking his fist. Well that’s embarrassing, he was dropped by the guy who came last at shoulder wars.</p>
<p>‘C’mon bro, we were having a nice evening,’ Dave complains. He drops his shoulders petulantly, but his sword doesn’t waver. ‘Can you still come over?’ he asks Rose.</p>
<p>Rose lets her needles fade back into her specibus and turns her attention to Kanaya, who looks absolutely unfazed. She touches Kanaya’s cheek with gentle fingers.</p>
<p>‘I’m fine,’ Kanaya says. ‘If you’re comfortable, we can still go.’</p>
<p>Everyone is, except Dirk. When he fucks up, they’re supposed to go home, and he might understand that he’s not allowed to mess with their plans or make them do shit they don’t want to, but he isn’t comfortable with being the only precaution against him being Kanaya holding his hands behind his back. He can’t shake her off, but what are they going to do when Kanaya wants to eat?</p>
<p>Inside Dave and Karkat’s hive, he discovers that this, like all his other outbursts, was planned for. Rose confiscates his shades, his sylladex of two whole cards (goodbye puppet and ... other puppet) and kicks him roughly behind the knees to make him fall to the floor. </p>
<p>His breathing is already coming easier just from seeing how routinely Rose is acting. She foresaw this (of course) and is ready for him. She ties his hands behind his back just a bit too tight and slips his blindfold on. He’s led back up to standing, walked across the room and hitched to the staircase. <em>Like a pony,</em> and the irony is tasty enough that he turns his head blindly trying to hear where Dave is.</p>
<p>He missed Dave while he was off trying to ruin everything. He missed Jane and Roxy. He missed Rose even when she was right beside him. And dear lord did he miss Jake, he missed that asshole more than air. Things are still awkward on that front. Sometimes, when Dirk forgets that he’s evil, he thinks it’ll only take time for that to heal.</p>
<p>‘Is someone watching me,’ he asks softly. </p>
<p>‘Always,’ Kanaya replies.</p>
<p>He leans against the railing and fails to apologise. </p>
<p>‘What if—’</p>
<p>‘No,’ Kanaya interrupts. ‘I don’t think dwelling on that will get you anywhere this evening. And if you so much as flex against your rope I will punch you in your penis. You don’t even get a fun word bundle for it, that’s how serious I am.’</p>
<p>Dirk sighs.</p>
<p>He hadn’t heard Kanaya approach at all, but he sure hears Karkat when he drops heavily onto the steps. Dirk can’t make up his mind on Karkat. The fact that he was so underwhelming in shoulder wars and then able to sucker punch him just before pretty much sums him up. Is he competent? Is it a confidence thing? He seems to work best when he <em>has</em> to act. Dirk doesn’t remember Karkat even being there when Kanaya got to him. In fairness, he was pretty preoccupied by the glowing vampire who had just performed a cosmic makeover wielding heavy machinery in his direction.</p>
<p>‘They’re doing it again,’ Karkat says. </p>
<p>‘That is not news,’ Kanaya says.</p>
<p>‘What?’ Dirk says.</p>
<p>‘Rose and Dave are pretending they’re not flirting,’ Karkat says.</p>
<p>‘Huh.’</p>
<p>‘No more talking for you, Dirk,’ Kanaya says.</p>
<p>There’s the noisy sound of chips being crunched aggressively, presumably coming from Karkat’s mouth. Dirk waits, interested in that line of conversation being continued. That wasn’t on his radar at all.</p>
<p>‘It’ll have to be her,’ Karkat says. ‘Dave has basically no initiative.’</p>
<p><em>He’s the one who made the first move on you,</em> Dirk wants to protest. Not exactly on his own, but it still counts. </p>
<p>‘And I have told you, she is completely blind to this. They’ve talked like this since they were children. She doesn’t even realise she’s doing it.’</p>
<p>‘Neither does he,’ Karkat says. More crunching. He doesn’t sound particularly concerned. ‘Things have been different since Rose let it slip about Dirk. Their bullshit taboo has less weight now they’ve seen how nobody gives a shit about whatever the fuck is going on here.’</p>
<p>‘Mmhmm.’ A pause. ‘Would you want to follow Dave?’</p>
<p>Karkat snorts and says, ‘Rose scares the shit out of me.’</p>
<p>Dirk pulls against the rope, testing the strength. As promised, he gets a punch right to the balls. He attempts to curl up, groaning and coughing as the nausea hits him. <em>Bullshit</em> weakness. It’s some kind of female privilege that they don’t have to deal with this. He breathes through his nose in short bursts and hears none of the words for the rest of the conversation. He really didn’t have to test that particular boundary.</p>
<p>They retie him around a table leg as they sit down for dinner and Dirk reflects that he’s a dog rather than pony now. He pays attention to Dave and Rose’s conversation in particular, a bit of jealousy colouring his curiosity. If their situation is going to open Dave’s mind to incest, he’s sitting <em>right here.</em> Come on. And he doesn’t want to share Rose.</p>
<p>‘I don’t know how Karkat lets you outside looking like this,’ Rose says. ‘I wouldn’t, if I were in his shoes.’</p>
<p>‘You couldn’t handle being in his shoes,’ Dave says.</p>
<p>‘Is that so.’</p>
<p>‘You’d have a perma-concussion from the constant swooning, obviously, dropping like a goddamn fainting goat whenever I walk past. And look, I’d try and catch you, I’m a gentleman like that, but sometimes it’d be from across the room or behind me or whatever, I can’t be everywhere at once. It’s like Jesus, Lalonde, get up off the fucking floor, you’re drooling on the carpet again.’</p>
<p>‘And I suppose you could handle me?’</p>
<p>‘I could <em>handle</em> you, sure,’ Dave says. </p>
<p>‘It has been an absolute delight watching you grow from an eleven-year-old to a five-year-old,’ Rose says. ‘In celebration of your Benjamin Button reenactment, I will even do you the great service of puncturing the pineapple you call a head and letting out some of that gas in there. I have no idea how you’ve managed to fart in your own brain, it’s almost as much of an achievement as aging backwards.’</p>
<p>‘Pineapples aren’t even head-shaped, get your fuckin’ act together.’</p>
<p>‘Yes, you <em>do</em> have a very unfortunate head shape. Add that to the list of difficulties involved in being your partner.’</p>
<p>Dirk can maybe see Karkat’s point. </p>
<p>When they get home, Rose straps Dirk into his bed’s straightjacket as if she’s tucking him in, then performatively checks the cameras he only discovered a couple of weeks ago like a parent checking the monsters under the bed. The cameras are the reason for their usually nocturnal schedule; it allows for people to monitor him during the day.</p>
<p>The pressure of the jacket is actually a great comfort, and Dirk’s fine with the extra supervision. If he could only have his puppets and be in control of the ties holding his arms to his chest, he’d love this sleeping arrangement. Rose strokes his hair back and kisses him on the forehead to complete her semi-ironic mothering routine. </p>
<p>‘Did I fuck up?’ Dirk asks before she can leave. He knows he did, but Rose hears what he’s really asking. </p>
<p>‘I’m scheduling you in for a spanking,’ Rose says wryly, and he hears how she’s really answering. <em>Not irreparably.</em> She closes and locks the door behind her. There’s a comical number of clicks and thunks.</p>
<p>Dirk’s always been better with a project. Or, more correctly, he’s been fucking shit without one. Making normal life his project after the game didn’t work out so hot for him, and in his desperation for something that made sense, he took Rose and Terezi and executed something more <em>him.</em> He found it fulfilling the same way he found preparing for the game fulfilling; it filled him up with sludge and tar but at least he was full.</p>
<p>In a lot of ways he hates this. He’s best when he’s the worst, when he gives into those toxic parts of him that want to control and manipulate and then coldly carries out plans that no one else could pull off. He’s at his worst when he has the time to confront the fact that being able to do that makes him a bad person. And right now he clings to his worst attributes as he tests and tests a daughter who is both too much and not enough like him. </p>
<p>But that’s such a minor part of his life, because they’ve proven again and again that they’re up to the challenge of keeping him in, and he just can’t think of the plan that might take him out. He doesn’t <em>want</em> to think of it. </p>
<p>He wants being good to be his project, to throw himself into self-improvement the way he pulled exactly the right strings to make his family their worst selves, just as ruined as he was. But it’s not a project. He can’t plot a path to goodness. He could only plot a path to other people thinking of him as good, and that mimickry is the best thing he has. </p>
<p>But there’s something else, too. Everything he does is under someone else’s control and he has <em>so much time.</em> There’s no fire in this house. His pissweak attempts at escape don’t count. He’s forced to sit in peace, and every day it grates against him a little less.</p>
  </div><div class="fff_chapter_notes fff_foot_notes"><b>Notes for the Chapter:</b><blockquote class="userstuff">
          <p>This bad boy can fit so many inside jokes in it!</p>
        </blockquote></div></div>
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